Typical warehouse operations include handling and storage of products in order to efficiently receive inventory, store it, collect products from different containers to prepare orders, and ship orders to customers. Handling and storage of products in a storage system involve a number of in-storage inventory transfers performed within the warehouse. After containers with products are received and moved to an initial storing location, products are often moved within the facility for storage or order selection. Further, after an order for product shipment is received, it is necessary to collect the required products to fulfill the order and move orders to a shipping area.
Several transfer movements are required in a typical warehouse. First, products are moved from the receiving area to a remote storage location. Additional movements may be required prior to order assembly, depending upon warehouse operating procedures. To fulfill an order, products are usually transferred from a storage area to a picking area. Finally, prepared orders are moved from a picking area to a shipping dock for loading to outbound transportation means.
In traditional storage systems, transfer movements are carried out using a combination of lift trucks, conveyors, and manual processes. However, such transfer operations are slow, and involve complex logistics and substantial labor cost when a large number of orders must be processed.
Therefore, it would be desirable to develop storage systems capable of performing in-storage transfer operations in a quick and efficient manner.
Also, there is a need for transferring containers within a storage system or out of a storage system in a predetermined sequence.
For example, during an order processing procedure when multiple orders are fulfilled at the same time, different orders may require collection of products from different containers. To increase the efficiency of the order fulfillment and the throughput of the storage system, it would be desirable to deliver containers to a picking area in a predefined sequence so as to enable a picking device or operator to pick products required to fulfill processed orders sequentially. For instance, to fulfill the first order, products stored in containers 1 and 2 may be required, to fulfill the second order, products from containers 3 and 4 may be needed, and to fulfill the third order, products from containers 5 and 6 should be delivered. In this case, it would be desirable to produce a sequence of containers in which containers 3 and 4 follow containers 1 and 2, and containers 5 and 6 follow containers 3 and 4.
Also, an order may include multiple products that should be packed in a specific sequence. For example, heavy products need to be placed at the bottom of the container, while lightweight products may be placed after the heavy products. In this case, to efficiently fulfill the order, it would be desirable to deliver containers with the heavy products before containers with the lightweight products.
Further, trucks used for shipping orders from a warehouse or fulfillment center should be loaded in accordance with order destinations so as to make it possible to unload containers delivered to closer destinations without unloading the remaining containers from the truck. In this case, it would be desirable to transfer containers to truck loading ports in an order determined by containers' destinations.